Matt is on Animoto

I was stumbling tonight and after wading through crappy sites for a half hour I almost skipped over one called animoto.com. Basically the site takes your images, and your music (or their music) and auto-magically makes a sweet video.

For free you can make 30 second videos, which I did and have shared below. I don't know how much it is but you can also pay to make full length-videos and can make them dvd quality and stuff. I sound like an advertisement for them...

Anyways enough blab, here's my little production of Matt and I.



Yes I know it's short but still, isn't that cool?
edit: And yes I know it covers up half my blog oh well...

It's... ALIVE!!!

The Kia is running. Why did it take so long? Here's a list of what I replaced.

• All 16 Valves.
• Head Gasket, Intake Gasket, Exhaust Gasket
• Motor Mounts
• Front Calipers
• Brake Pads
• Front Tires
• Power Steering Belt
• Alternator Belt
• Alternator Mount Spacer (Lost it, then found it later in the street)
• One Head Bolt (Lost it, then found it later in the yard, needed it anyways, one was messed up)
• Three valve cover gasket bolts (They break so easy! Josh broke one and I broke the other two)
  
• Fuel Filters
• Cleaned the Fuel Injectors
• Some little Vacuum Hose connector
• Valve Cover Gasket
• Distributor Thingy
• All 4 Spark Plugs

I think that's everything. It's been so long and my brother helped me out a lot. He showed me that I can do it, which I know I can now. It's useful having an extra set of hands though.

Blood (literally it's on the exhaust manifolt and valve cover), sweat, and not many tears went into getting this car running again. I'd like to thank my mother, for letting me park the POS in her back yard for almost a year. I'd like to thank Karen for her support as well, my father chipped in too. Thank you Ally for encouraging me when the Kia kept up with a new problem every time I worked on it. Pretty much everyone in the family has helped me put this car back together some how.

Thank you.

I made mistakes when repairing this car, but I've learned from them. I'm a much better mechanic now. To anyone reading this that I don't know, I cannot stress enough how important it is to replace your timing belt if you have an interference engine.

Now, I just wait on the DMV for a day pass, then I can get it smogged.

In case you're wondering, I'm not playing World of Bore-craft anymore. I did get my epic flying mount shortly after that post, and it went downhill from there. I tried to play it tonight (I haven't played it in over a month) to relax a bit but It's just not fun anymore.  I just got bored with it, and I had better things to do.  Like say I don't know, look for a job? Still no luck there...

My student loans are due now, what kick in the balls. Damn you economy!!

I have this great idea though, and I want to follow through with it. I like this idea so much I'm going to write it down so later on when I'm not doing it I can say hey I'm going to work on that now.

Requiem for a dream, have you heard that song? It's EPIC. Here's a link to youtube with the song. Just a slight warning though, it has some gore (maybe a lot of gore) and a little nudity. Nothing my family can't handle though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEF6D32HNMI
It's a really good AMV too... which stands for... er.. Anime... Music Video? I think? Whatever.. Why don't I just embed it? Because it's kind of gory and has some nudity! Oh the humanity.. is that a pun?! No.

Anyways listening to that song got my brain turning and whenver I listen to music I get really great videos playing in my head. Here's the script for the animation I want to make.

*Slow intro with violin and cello playing* Me driving home in my Kia. I am happy and loving my car.
*First big bumpy thing* Car stalls.. I pull over... dramatic fades for effect
*First big ahhh chorus* I open the hood... see the timing belt is broken...
*Quiet Part afterwards* Car getting towed... getting tools ready... setting up everything
*big horn thingy blowing* Dramatic montage of me turnin wrenches with my bro
*just before the cool part with teh dundundunnn!* My bro says "The valves... are bent"
*awesome dundundunn parts* Ordering Parts... finish with a dramatic "Order" click
*Quiet part* Borrowing the PT.. go in to work..
*quiet part continues, chorus starts* Dan says to me, "Sean, we need you downstairs"
*chorus builds up* as I walk down the stairs
*at end of chorus before the dundundunns* Boss says "You're all fired!"
*dundundunns go* rage sequence of me thrashing the kia back together
*more dunndunduns* montage of putting car together while family is supporting me
*for the dramatic finish* wrenching the last bolt down, slamming the hood, and starting the engine.
*quiet piano at end of the song* driving the kia off into the sunset

Hopefully my amateur drawing skills and non-existent animation skills will be enough for the fantastic vision I have in my head. There's even more going on in there right now, and each scene begins with the setting "dramatic". Man, I just want to start drawing a story board right this second and throwing together a windows media maker story board! As it is though, I'm up late and Ally is dragging me to the dreaded Renaissance Faire tomorrow morning.

If you read all of this post, thank you.

Grinding My Way to Epic Flight Form

I've been working pretty hard on my hunter recently, she's level 78 now in a top secret grinding location which hopefully will make me tons of gold. So far I've made about 500 gold off of it, and after my Arctic Furs sell I will make about 1000 gold. I've only been there for 3 or 4 hours too. Not bad!
Each maintenance Tuesday comes and goes, and no 3.0.8 patch. This is good, because they're nerfing how I level right now. They're nerfing volley's dps by 30%, and pet damage by 10-15%. While I'm sad to see the dps go, I wish they'd never made volley so good in the first place. I can't use any other pet than the gorilla because killing fewer than 4 mobs at a time seems like a waste of time.

I've been saving my gold and I have about 4000 now. I've spent the 1000 gold for cold weather flying and just grinding my way to 5200 gold. (5000 for the epic mount training, 200 gold for the epic mount). After that it's just a matter of grinding the dailies for Netherwing, and mining in Sholazar/Storm Peaks/Ice Crown.

I'm really excited about getting my epic mount. I've been playing this game off and on since it came out and never have I had an epic flying mount. Anyways, I need to look for a job and contact some leads.

What's your gold grinding secret?

Microsoft Patents A New Way To Gouge and Spy On Customers

I don't post often, but after seeing this, I had to rant a bit. Microsoft has patented a way to meter your computer usage and charge you for it. I know they're trying to make powerful PC's cheaper to obtain, but in the end you pay more.

Their idea is, you pay little up front for a powerful computer. During the week when you're just browsing you go into a low power mode, and only use a little of the computer's hardware, and a few software programs. Then on the weekend when you play Left 4 Dead and Everquest 2 (maybe not EQ2, does anyone still play that? *wink*), you are charged for a higher resource usage of the computer.

Over time you end up paying more, but the payments are deferred. Microsoft even admitted it costs more, "Although the cost of ownership over the life of the computer may be higher than that of a one-time purchase, the payments can be deferred and the user can extend the useful life of the computer beyond that of the one-time purchase machine," Microsoft argued.

That is a bad argument, computer parts last a long time. Unless you receive a defective part, the part is put in with incompatible hardware (too much power/too little power), or you use that nVidia 8800GT-x turbo at 100% all the time, you computer parts will rarely fail. If a part does break, the part is probably cheaper than what you originally bought it for, or you can upgrade it for about the same as the original purchase.

Some good comments from the article on Computer World above, one for and one against.

"What I've long wanted to see is the ability to have software on this basis. That way, if there's some piece of software you want to use only once in a while, you can pay for the usage rather than purchase the software outright. It could go a long way to reduce piracy... think of all those people who won't pay $500 upfront for PhotoShop, but want to have the full power of the application once in a while."

This is a good point, I don't know a single person that has bought Photoshop for personal use, but there are times that It'd be nice to use it for a few hours. I'd rather spend 5 bucks to legally download it and use it for 24 hours time instead of pirating it.

"I'm a fairly avid gamer. I never buy the top of the line EQ, but I like to upgrade to a new PC every 5 years or so to be able to play the latest games. Let's say for argument that I spend $1500 for a nice PC every 5 years. That's appx. $25 a month (not couting the games themselves). For that price I could use 100% of my computer 100% of the time. So unless Microsoft wants to rent me an alienware for less than $25 a month (total. no fees or purchase) and let me use 100% of it I'm not sold.
Conversely, the average non-gamer could be assumed to spend $500 every 8 years for $5.20 a month.
If it comes to be do the math out and decide for yourself. (150% change MS overcharges everyone, especially the average user.)"

Another good point, the math just doesn't add up on this. It sounds like this is aimed at the average gamer. But these days you can build a top of the line system for $1,000 or so, and less if you are upgrading a few parts. Credit cards turn that into monthly payments if you choose so I really don't see the appeal to this.

In the end, this will probably anger a lot of nerds (like me) and confuse everyone else.
Microsoft, you've done me wrong again.

Sweet dance party in Shattrath tonight!

So there was a sweet dance party in Shattrath tonight. Here's some pics!

It started off small.

Then it got big.

That was fun =)